5.2 on the Background Downloader, Assault on Zeb'tula, Love is in the Air, Blue Posts

Patch 5.2 on the Background Downloader
This weekend the Launcher started downloading ~1 GB of assets for Patch 5.2. Keep in mind that this doesn't mean the patch is coming anytime soon, especially as LFR bosses still need tuning and Isle of the Thunder King still needs testing.

Patch 5.2 - Assault on Zeb'tulaAssault on Zeb'tula is the solo scenario that you experience when going through the Horde Isle of Thunder intro quest line.

Upon logging in to Patch 5.2, you will be sent to the Horde camp near Shadopan Garrison, in Townlong Steppes. Scout Captain Elsia will escort you to the Isle of Thunder and then you have a brief conversation with Lor'themar Theron. After speaking with him, he will ask for your help in establishing a base on the island.

Originally Posted by MMO-Champion

Scout Captain Elsia: Pandaren legends tell of Lei Shen, "The Thunder King." He was the brutal founder of the Mogu empire over 12,000 years ago. He united the mogu, defeated the other pandaren races, and founded a glorious nation with the slave labor of those he conquered.Scout Captain Elsia: The Thunder King built a palatial fortress on the borders of his empire. We should see it soon...Scout Captain Elsia: There! Just ahead: The Isle of the Thunder King.Scout Captain Elsia: The Pandaren are terrified that the former Emperor will try to reclaim his empire, and enslave them once again. But we have our own reasons for assisting them. I will allow Lor'themar to explain.Scout Captain Elsia: Whoa! Careful - it is nearly impossible to fly anywhere near the island!

Lor'themar Theron: Aethas, leave us for a moment.Lor'themar Theron: Hero, you have served the Horde nobly across many campaigns. I feel I can take you into confidence. Our Warchief's campaign across Kalimdor and Pandaria is pulling the Horde apart at the seams. We are here to fight the Thunder King. Justice demands it, and Hellscream is too preoccupied at Domination Point to pay attention here. But, in defeating him, we must seek out the source of his great power. We must claim it for ourselves, as leverage against our "Warchief." In the event of an uprising, we must be prepared.Lor'themar Theron: Heads up! Ha-hah! It will feel good to bloody my blade again. Against Alliance or mogu, does not matter to me.Lor'themar Theron: Enough talk. You know how precarious our position is. Between the Alliance and the Thunder King, only with the help of heroes like you can we hope to succeed here. Anar'alah belore, hero. Good luck.

Love is in the Air 2013Love is in the Air once again, at least until February 23! Not much has changed this year, other than the addition of updated Neck slot rewards.

Q4 2012 Earnings Call
There were a few more interesting points from the Q4 2012 earnings call, other than the subscriber number drop.

The majority of the decline in subscriber numbers came from China, and the number in the west was more stable.

Engagement was better in the months after the Mists of Pandaria launch than it was after the Cataclysm launch in all regions, including China.

The next WoW update should reach players "in the coming weeks".

There should be a Blizzcon 2013 announcement soon.

Since Cataclysm, players are more apt to come and go from the community. This is being addressed by providing more frequent content updates.

Blue Posts

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

PTR Class and Set Bonus IssuesI believe he said it will last 15 seconds and stack exactly how Censure does now. If that is the case we should be able to swap between two targets in that 15 second time span. However, since the stacks will get consumed it will be more difficult to keep them up on more than one target.
Our intent was that if you were building stacks of Justice and had to swap targets, you'd then be building stacks on two targets. The more generous we make the duration, the easier that is to do, but the harder it is for enemies to escape as well.

Scorch was our only way to obtain at least some mobility before it became castable while moving (yes some of us actually PvP'd as fire before this change). Before that, and at least for me, my only option to chase somebody besides keeping living bomb up was spamming icelance and tbh, I never liked it.
Another idea is to put Scorch back in the talent tree and just remove Blazing Speed. Maybe Blink just provides too much of the same niche. Scorch trumps Ice Floes at the moment, but we think we could solve that.

Any chance shadow priest PvE damage and off-healing concerns will be addressed before 5.2 goes live? Part 1 of the thread is full of them. Part 2 just became PTR world of paladincraft. Maybe make a separate paladin thread before having to close this one too?
RE: Shadow. We haven't buffed damage yet. Mind Blast is a likely candidate because it helps damage on the move and doesn't change rotation priorities. Mind Sear perhaps too. All of that is off the top of my head, so don't hold me to it.

RE: Paladins. Welcome to my world.

Your data is full of PVE Ret paladins. PVP paladins use FoJ in arenas.
I was explicitly referring to relatively high-end Arena players. Many (guessing 60% because I don't have the data right in front of me) use FoJ. The rest split between Burden and Repentance about evenly. We can't always answer why players use certain abilities, but we can usually answer what they're using.

Death Knight
- You now maintain the same percentage of health when you switch into and out of Blood Presence
- Strangulate (but not Asphyxiate) is off the GCD.

Can Hunters please see some adjustments on our end talents to make more than Glaive Toss worth taking for raids? Barrage is very limited and Powershot is useless and never taken in raids, doing less than half the DPS of Glaive Toss.
I know you've mentioned this before, but it doesn't match up with what we're seeing. Do you have a link or some other evidence we can chase down?

I may regret this, because I don't know that I can capture every one and we iterate on this stuff really rapidly. We may change a number one day and change it again the next when we look at AE or PvP damage or whatever. If frequent iteration scares you, look away! But in the interest of providing context and helping theorycrafting, I'll give it a go.

DPS Tuning Adjustments

- Arms - Increased Deep Wounds by +100%.
- Balance - Increased Starfire, Wrath and Starsurge by 9%.
- Mind Blast - Increased Mind Blast by 20%. (Yeah I know you have to stop and cast it modulo procs, but I meant in contrast to Mind Flay which makes you really plant.)

Recent datamining has shown Invocation being nerfed to reduce our natural mana regen by 100%, up from 50%.
It was that way briefly (and the PTR pull may have caught that change). Instead we are leaving Invocation at -50% mana regen, but we changed Evocation to generate 10% mana per tick for Arcane, but affected by Arcane Charges (25% per charge and consumes all charges).

The intent of this change is to try and spare you from having to do single GCDs of Evo every 3 casts, which is probably worth it but not much fun. It's a net buff to Evo total mana regen but a net nerf to frequent Evos.

A lot of Warlocks are wondering why our AOE spells are getting reduced so dramatically?
Are you referring to Seed of Corruption and Fire and Brimstone? We don't usually do 15 yard radii for AE spells. It just felt gratuitous and was causing warlocks to do a lot of extra damage in some situations without requiring any extra effort on their part. It was also a bit ridiculous with Mannoroth's Fury.

i assumed this was suppose to spread the snare from warbringer to other targets also never actually seen it in any official patch notes.. was this an error on their part or is bugged currently on the ptr?

World of Warcraft Difficulty Over TimeBUHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Thanks for showing your ignorance
Ah, you're welcome, I'll educately bow down my head in a sincere apology, as you have eloquently, elaboratedly and irrefutably proved through facts and your own experience that I am completely wrong about this affirmation.

If you want to say I'm wrong, at least go on and elaborate why. We all might be missing an interesting point of view just because you decided to take a shortcut that didn't add anything to the discussion.

Most of current encounters are just combination of total randomness that decides will you wipe or not (sunbeams spawning on top of the adds on Tsulong as example). It's not hard, it's just random.
So, a boss that you can predictably determine which ability is going to cast next (any vanilla boss with a DBM-like addon) is harder than a boss with more room for random abilities? Random sounds actually like a good reason to define something as hard. If you can't control it, you can't just yawn through it.

Why do you think that making the game less accessible again would bring back the old times?
This is an interesting question, especially for those of you that do consider reducing the accesibility of the game would bring back players. (As a side related note, since we're mostly talking about raiding content, remember that Patch 5.2 introduces a Heroic only boss, Ra-den).

Okay, so at this point anything I say you can easily reply with, that's not about accessibility. Pet management was removed, pets changed to be a vanilla set that all share the same three talent trees, and ammo removed. Call it what you want, I call it dumbing down.
Has the mechanic of the hunter (requiring an appropiate pet to be used at every time if you want to maximize your dps output) and its damage (you're insane if you weren't using the strongest ammo available to you) become simpler just because now you don't have to feed your pet or pick the highest dps available ammo? (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Invocation on PTR Feedback
We hear you, we really do. I’d just like to reinforce that it’s only PTR so don’t get overly upset about it, but please do continue to keep providing feedback about it, this is exactly when it’s needed the most, it’s one of the core reasons we have a PTR realm in the first place and we really do appreciate your help with tuning and balancing the game during this important stage.

So… Invocation. Duration and healing got reduced by 50%, it does seem like it should end up being the same “on average” as it is on live but I do realize that it’s actually not, it’s probably a lot more powerful for PvP as it is on the PTR right now.
I mean, the healing ends up being the same (on average, as in “healing per second”) as it is now on live, but the important fact that we have to retain here is that the heal only comes at the end of the cast, and in PvP that means a lot, it means that you can get interrupted and get no healing or DPS buff from it.

With a 3 second cast and no cooldown, things change; First, if you do get interrupted you will be able to cast it as soon as the interrupt effect wears off; Secondly, interrupting a 3 second cast (can be shortened by haste) is much harder than a 6 second one, so chances are, a mage will be able to complete his Invocations with a lot more ease.

Devs are still evaluating everything about the PTR, there isn’t much that they can’t tweak if they feel it’s necessary.

I hope that my reply is clear enough in the sense that it provides you with enough certainty and confidence about your point of view being understood, we’re definitely not ignoring you, we’ll evaluate everyone’s feedback like we always do, and you can be sure that it will be conveyed to the developers. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Blue Tweets

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

ClassesSimcraft and Raidbots is all we have. If you don't give us your data all we have is "trust us"I'll trust Raidbots
You can trust whatever you want. I'm just explaining why it's not as simple as linking to a URL and expecting us to buff you (Source)

Mage (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)I'm just praying Blizzard botches arcane mages and we can play frost next tier.
You may jest, but this is a really insightful tweet. Now imagine all the guys who want to play Fire or Arcane. How to solve? (Source)

Paladin (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)Any chance that Holy Paladins will ever receive a way to "melee heal" like Fistweaving?
Not in the immediate plans, but I agree it would fit the paladin kit. We'll keep it in mind. (Source)

please just buff ret sust damage or give us pressure mechanics or better cc. Sucks to be useful 20 secs every 3 min.
Every time we discuss nerfing burst and buffing sustain, hundreds of Rets cry no. (Source)

Today I had to bench myself as the raid leader on Sha of Fear 10m H progress because Ret DPS is terrible. Any buffs in sight?
I'm assuming you understand the problem where DPS is very hard to measure on that fight since everyone is so spread out. (Source)

giving repentance a cast and making it talent is like your prep mistake with rogue. Ret needs it as instant.
We'd probably get rid of every instant CC if we could. The expansion of instants caused a lot of problems long term. (Source)

please look at rets in PvE GC we bring no unique buff give us attack speed
We are trying to get away from unique buffs. We don't want every group to feel a Ret is mandatory. (Source)

You nerfed Shadow's core abilities without having a concept? Great, exactly what I expected from you.
Sorry you think Shadow is fine in PvP. We disagree and we are not alone. (Source)

please gc, are there still more buffs for disc pvp coming? Pws undispellabe would be glorious.
Not a fan of undispellable anything TBH. (Source)

No other healer has to choose which foot to shoot for 30 seconds either. It an outdated mechanic like tree form
We disagree. Tree form gave up utility and DPS for healing. Chakra lets you focus on DPS, AE or ST but you can still change. (Source)

how are Surge of Darkness/Mindbender even close to a "Strong Cooldown", compared to other casters? Stop joking.
We don't want to give every single spec a 2 min cooldown or whatever. That really leads to classes all feeling the same. (Source)

Curse Weekly Roundup
The Ouya is set to arrive in stores this June, Assassins Creed gets a new hero, Minecraft got some updates, Season 3 games are underway for League of Legends fans, and this week's Game Forecast.

The spec names on the loot table should be changed... Should be something like Str Tank, Str Melee and Agi instead of Tank, Melee and Physical dps... I mean for example Fury Warrirors do physical dps, WW Monks are melee and Guardian Druids are tanks but neither use the pieces that are under respective Specs in the table... I know I'm nitpicking, but I literally don't have anything better to do at the moment (reinstalling OS on the PC, so browsing the net on a really old laptop atm) :-)

I never understood why anyone thought MoP ´catered´ to players from China. It is a theme. I played games that didn´t even exist in china that had ´china theme´. I guess WOTLK was Blizzard trying to corner the Norway players? Uldum was there to grab those millions of egyptian players.

Now if Blizzard starts creating player races where the eyes are half the face.. then maybe..

Active – PTR set to stage 0. The Sunreavers and Kirin-Tor will besiege the island from offshore.
Feb 8 – PTR set to Stage 1. You’ll be able to conquer a foothold on the island itself.
Feb 12– PTR set to stage 2. With your help, Jaina and Lor’themar will blast the walls and infiltrate the outer city.
Feb 15– PTR set to stage 3. Daring players can infiltrate the mines and blast open the doors to the Thunder Forge.
Feb 19 – PTR set to stage 4. Block further Zandalari reinforcements by overtaking the shipyard.
Feb 22 – PTR set to stage 5. Fight your way to the Thunder King’s front door! Jaina and Lor’themar will have a ... reckoning.

Well technically there are still things that need to be fixed yet they are in the live version anyways. They could release it soon and just try to fix it when it goes live. Dont get me wrong, I would prefer they get the bugs out of the patch before it goes live.

I highly doubt they're gonna try to deploy it the same week as HotS launches, and the week after seems a little late considering the PTR stage schedule.

So what you suggest? Late Feb? If they was to release it last week of Feb I'm pretty sure they need to announce it in the coming 2 days, and late feb is way too early anyways. They still need to test 10m HC, 25m N + HC.

So what you suggest? Late Feb? If they was to release it last week of Feb I'm pretty sure they need to announce it in the coming 2 days, and late feb is way too early anyways. They still need to test 10m HC, 25m N + HC.

I never understood why anyone thought MoP ´catered´ to players from China. It is a theme. I played games that didn´t even exist in china that had ´china theme´. I guess WOTLK was Blizzard trying to corner the Norway players? Uldum was there to grab those millions of egyptian players.

Now if Blizzard starts creating player races where the eyes are half the face.. then maybe..